Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Contextual Moral Vegetarianism

In this [essay] I provide an example of a distinctively
ecofeminist moral concern: our relations to what we are willing to count as
food. Vegetarianism has been defended as a moral obligation that results from
rights that nonhuman animals have in virtue of being sentient beings (Regan
1983, 330-53). However, a distinctively ecofeminist defense of moral
vegetarianism is better expressed as a core concept in an ecofeminist ethic of
care. One clear way of distinguishing the two approaches is that whereas the
rights approach is not inherently contextual[1] (it is the response to the
rights of all sentient beings), the caring-for approach responds to particular
contexts and histories. It recognizes that the reasons for moral vegetarianism
may differ by locale, by gender, as well as by class.

Moral vegetarianism is a fruitful issue for ecofeminists to
explore in developing an ecological ethics because in judging the adequacy of
an ethic by reference to its understanding of food one draws attention to
precisely those aspects of daily experience that have often been regarded as "beneath"
the interest of philosophy. Plato's remark in the Gorgias is typical of the
dismissive attitude philosophers have usually had toward food. Pastry cooking,
he says, is like rhetoric: both are mere "knacks" or
"routines" designed to appeal to our bodily instincts rather than our
intellects (Plato 1961, 245).

Plato's dismissive remark also points to something that
feminists need to take very seriously, namely, that a distinctively feminist
ethic, as Susan Bordo and others argue, should include the body as moral agent.
Here too the experiences of women in patriarchal cultures are especially
valuable because women, more then men, experience the effects of culturally
sanctioned oppressive attitudes toward the appropriate shape of the body. Susan
Bordo has argued that anorexia nervosa is a "psychopathology" made
possible by Cartesian attitudes toward the body at a popular level. Anorexics
typically feel alienation from their bodies and the hunger "it"
feels. Bordo quotes one woman as saying she ate because "my stomach wanted
it"; another dreamed of being "without a body." Anorexics want
to achieve "absolute purity, hyperintellectuality and transcendence of the
flesh" (Bordo 1988, 94, 95; also see Chernin 1981). These attitudes toward
the body have served to distort the deep sense in which human beings are
embodied creatures; they have therefore further distorted our being as animals.
To be a person, as distinct from an "animal," is to be disembodied.

This dynamic is vividly exposed by Carol Adams in The Sexual
Politics of Meat (Adams 1989, part 1). There are important connections through
food between the oppression of women and the oppression of nonhuman animals.
Typical of the wealth of evidence she presents are the following: the
connection of women and animals through pornographic representations of women
as "meat" ready to be carved up, for example in "snuff' films;
the fact that language masks our true relationship with animals, making them
"absent referents" by giving meat words positive connotations
("That's a meaty question;" "Where's the beef?") while
disparaging nonflesh foods ("Don't watch so much TV! You'll turn into a
vegetable"); men, athletes and soldiers in particular, are associated with
red meat and activity ("To have muscle you need to eat muscle"),
whereas women are associated with vegetables and passivity ("ladies'
luncheons" typically offer dainty sandwiches with no red meat).

As a "contextual moral vegetarian," I cannot refer
to an absolute moral rule that prohibits meat eating under all circumstances.
There may be some contexts in which another response is appropriate. Though I
am committed to moral vegetarianism, I cannot say that I would never kill an
animal for food. Would I not kill an animal to provide food for my son if he
were starving? Would I not generally prefer the death of a bear to the death of
a loved one? I am sure I would. The point of a contextualist ethic is that one
need not treat all interests equally as if one had no relationship to any of
the parties.

Beyond personal contextual relations, geographical contexts
may sometimes be relevant. The Ihalmiut, for example, whose frigid domain makes
the growing of food impossible, do not have the option of vegetarian cuisine.
The economy of their food practices, however, and their tradition of
"thanking" the deer for giving its life are reflective of a serious,
focused, compassionate attitude toward the "gift" of a meal.

In some cultures violence against nonhuman life is
ritualized in such a way that one is present to the reality of one's food. The
Japanese have a Shinto ceremony that pays respect to the insects that are
killed during rice planting. Tibetans, who as Buddhists have not generally been
drawn to vegetarianism, nevertheless give their own bodies back to the animals
in an ultimate act of thanks by having their corpses hacked into pieces as food
for the birds.[2] Cultures such as these have ways of expressing spiritually
the idea "we are what we eat," even if they are not vegetarian.

If there is any context, on the other hand, in which moral
vegetarianism is completely compelling as an expression of an ecological ethic
of care, it is for economically well-off persons in technologically advanced
countries. First, these are persons who have a choice of what food they want to
eat; they have a choice of what they will count as food. Morality and ontology
are closely connected here. It is one thing to inflict pain on animals when
geography offers no other choice. But in the case of killing animals for human
consumption where there is a choice, this practice inflicts pain that is
completely unnecessary and avoidable. The injunction to care, considered as an
issue of moral and political development, should be understood to include the
injunction to eliminate needless suffering wherever possible, and particularly
the suffering of those whose suffering is conceptually connected to one's own.
It should not be understood as an injunction that includes the imperative to
rethink what it means to be a person connected with the imperative to rethink
the status of nonhuman animals. An ecofeminist perspective emphasizes that
one's body is oneself, and that by inflicting violence needlessly, one's bodily
self becomes a context for violence. One becomes violent by taking part in
violent food practices. The ontological implication of a feminist ethic of care
is that nonhuman animals should no longer count as food.

Second, most of the meat and dairy products in these
countries do not come from mom-and-pop farms with little red barns. Factory
farms are responsible for most of the 6 billion animals killed for food every
year in the United States (Adams 1989, 6). It is curious that steriods are
considered dangerous to athletes, but animals that have been genetically
engineered and chemically induced to grow faster and come to market sooner are
considered to be an entirely different issue. One would have to be hardened to
know the conditions factory-farm animals live in and not feel disgust
concerning their treatment.[3]

Third, much of the effect of the eating practices of persons
in industrialized countries is felt in oppressed countries. Land owned by the
wealthy that was once used to grow inexpensive crops for local people has been
converted to the production of expensive products (beef) for export. Increased
trade of food products with these countries is consistently the cause of
increased starvation. In cultures where food preparation is primarily
understood as women's work, starvation is primarily a women's issue. Food
expresses who we are politically just as much as bodily. One need not be aware
of the fact that one's food practices oppress others in order to be an
oppressor.

From a woman's perspective, in particular, it makes sense to
ask whether one should become a vegan, a vegetarian who, in addition to
refraining from meat and fish, also refrains from eating eggs and dairy
products. Since the consumption of eggs and milk have in common that they
exploit the reproductive capacities of the female, vegetarianism is not a
gender neutral issue.[4] To choose one's diet in a patriarchal culture is one
way of politicizing an ethic of care. It marks a daily, bodily commitment to
resist ideological pressures to conform to patriarchal standards, and to
establishing contexts in which caring for can be nonabusive.

Just as there are gender-specific reasons for women's
commitment to vegetarianism, for men in a patriarchal society moral
vegetarianism can mark the decision to stand in solidarity with women. It also
indicates a determination to resist ideological pressures to become a
"real man." Real people do not need to eat "real food," as
the American Beef Council would have us believe.

[1] Regan calls the animal's right not to be killed a prima
facie right that may be overridden. Nevertheless, his theory is not inherently
contextualized.

[2] This practice is also ecologically sound since it saves
the enormous expense of firewood for cremation.

[3] See John Robbing (1987). It should be noted that in
response to such knowledge some reflective nonvegetarians commit to eating
range-grown chickens but not those grown in factory farms.

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---- In Solidarity with Quebec's Student Movement ----

To respond “at the right times with reference to the right objects, toward the right people, with the right aim, and in the right way, is what is appropriate and best, and this is characteristic of excellence.”Aristotle (EN, 1106b21-3)